


The Time of Monsters

by SouthSideStory



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:30:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12025260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: This is the key: orphans want to be nurtured, the friendless crave an audience of peers, and all lonely creatures desire intimacy. Utena may be the loneliest creature at Ohtori, after Anthy herself. And the thing about loneliness is, no matter how you try to outrun it, it always catches up to you.





	The Time of Monsters

.

.

_this is a story about the monsters and lovers and the gory pawns in between._

_this is a story about how they become the same thing._

_how my ribs break themselves to let her scrape her way between the flesh of my lungs. how I bleed. how she screams. how mouths only know how to bruise._

.

.

They all know she’s used, that she’s given herself to countless suitors. They know, and yet each of the duelists―her captors, her playthings―treats Anthy like she’s theirs alone. An untouched land, just waiting to be claimed by the right conqueror.

It’s strange, Anthy thinks. Humans have the most fascinating ability for self-deception.

.

.

Saionji is both the most difficult and the easiest to deal with. He’s a petty, jealous creature driven by childish wants, and like a child, he’s thoughtless, selfish, fearful. He strikes her and enjoys her suffering, and when he takes her it’s always as rough as he can make it. It hurts Anthy’s pride to serve a boy so weak and needy, but Saionji is nothing if not predictable, and there’s some relief in that. He never surprises her.

Juri is such a disdainful girl, so cynical and distant to look at her, but that’s a mask. Anthy can see straight through it, because she’s been wearing a mask of her own for centuries, for ages, for time immemorial. Juri wants to appear aloof, to be strong, but she’s the most vulnerable of them all, poisoned by love. That love works to Anthy’s benefit, though, so she doesn’t mind. Juri doesn’t want her, and she only bothers to exercise her rights as a victor once. Her passion is driven by such a desperate, hopeless need to be touched by any girl’s hands that Anthy can only pity her for it.

Poor Miki is confused. He isn’t made of stern enough stuff to keep pace with the rest of the council. Much too naive for the game he’s caught up in, but when you get right down to it, he’s as ambitious as the others. He wants the power that owning her will bring, and that desire pushes the limits of his kindness.

Touga is something else altogether. He’s far and away the cleverest, the cruelest, the most cunning. When it’s his turn to possess the Rose Bride, Touga spends every moment of their engagement weighing her worth, trying to pry loose her secrets. He asks sharp questions veiled by charm, whispered in her ear or against her throat when they’re caught in the heat between his bedsheets. Even if Anthy couldn’t read every thought going through his head, she’d know his intentions. Having her isn’t enough for a boy like Touga; he wants to understand her power, to take it and harness it for his own. He wants to be free of this wretched place, to escape from the noose her brother has fitted around his neck.

Because Akio―well, the less she thinks of Akio, the better.

.

.

Tenjou Utena is an oddity. No one ever leaves Ohtori, and it’s rare for anyone new to arrive. The whole school (as much as Ohtori is a school at all) fusses over her, admiring her beauty, her strength, her unapologetic rebellion against the staff’s stuffy restrictions. She’s lovely and fearless in a place that’s ugly and terrifying, but that isn’t why the student body is so taken with her. Even though their classmates can’t understand the truth, they must sense that Utena does not belong. That people don’t just wander from the outside world onto this campus.

“What do you think of her?” Akio asks.

They’re lying on the couch in the observatory. The vast windows are shuttered, so that no one can look out and no one can look in. Akio is feeling generous tonight, and his touch is almost tender when he pulls her close.

“Think of who?” Anthy asks.

Akio runs his hand down her side and settles it on her hip. He squeezes hard enough to mark.

“Don’t play at ignorance with me,” he says. “I know better.”

He does. Still, sometimes Anthy likes to test him, to remind herself that someone sees her as she really is.

“Tenjou Utena,” Anthy says. It’s the first time she’s said the girl’s name, and it leaves a bitter taste on the back of her tongue. “She seems stupid. Brave, but stupid.”

Akio hums, tilts his head back, and says, “You’re not wrong about that, but there’s much more to her. I wouldn’t have brought Utena here if she had no part to play.”

His grasp on her hip has softened to a caress, and Anthy resigns herself to the fact that he’ll have her again tonight. He’s restless for some reason, maybe because of this girl.

She closes her eyes so that she doesn’t have to look at him. Akio’s true form shows itself clearest at night, and without sunlight to hide it, she can see the darkness within him, surrounding him, wrapping around them both.

“So what’s her part?” Anthy asks.

Akio cups the curve where her thigh meets her bottom, fingers pushing between her legs. He presses his lips to her forehead as he does it, his kiss chaste and brotherly. It’s off-putting when he gets like this, tangling their public personas and private lives together.

Anthy buries her face against his chest. She can smell herself on his skin. It once repulsed her, but she’s so used to it now that almost nothing can repulse her.

He tells her to ride him, to cry, to smile. So Anthy rides him and cries and smiles.

He talks about Tenjou Utena throughout all of it. He has plans for Ohtori, for the two of them, for the world they’ve going to transform, and Utena is the key. When he gets close, Akio sits up, wraps his arms around her, and tucks his face into her hair.

“She’s the answer,” he whispers. His breathing has grown labored, but it doesn’t unsteady his voice. “We’re going to use her to tear this place to the ground, to take back what’s ours. You understand?”

Anthy nods. She moves the way he wants her to, loses herself in the mindlessness of obedience until she feels him shudder and gasp.

She can tell that something in Akio isn’t quite sated, even if his body is spent, and sure enough, he only gives her a moment of rest before he says, “You’ll have to be very careful with this one. She’s naive, so that will make ensnaring her easy enough, but keeping her will be harder. Utena isn’t the sort to be kept by anyone.”

Akio sounds almost _fond_ , and it sends a spike of red-hot resentment to the pit in her chest where compassion once lived.

“Well then why don’t you deal with her?” Anthy asks.

He laughs. “Oh, I’ll have my turn, but things will go more smoothly if you soften her up first.”

She should probably say something agreeable, like _of course_ , or _as you wish_ , or _whatever you want_. It will save her pain if she swallows her pride, but Anthy says nothing.

Akio grabs her hair and yanks her head back, so that she has to look up at him. His eyes are green and empty, a mirror image of her own.

“Don’t be jealous,” he says. “Utena is only a tool, and unless I’m very wrong, she’ll be more of a challenge than the others. You can’t tell me that that doesn’t excite you at least a little.”

It does excite her. Immortality has taught Anthy a great deal, but more than anything else, she’s learned that eternity is boring.

Akio pushes her away, and she falls against the couch cushions (white, white couch cushions that never dirty, no matter how often she is dirtied here). He stands up and starts pulling on his clothes while she lies there, sprawled and exposed. Anthy knows better than to get dressed without his permission.

“You should be grateful,” Akio says, as he buttons his jacket. “I’m letting you have her first.”

So what? She’s been the first for others before. It didn’t change anything. Nothing ever changes here, Anthy’s lot least of all.

She says, “Thank you.”

.

.

Utena steals her from Saionji without even meaning to. She challenges him on behalf of her vapid friend, Wakaba, and walks away with much more than she bargained for.

Anthy has never been engaged to someone who didn’t want something from her. The others lust after her body, her power, the perfected submission that she provides. But not Utena. All she wants is to be left out of the council’s machinations, to be a normal school girl. That, Anthy would like to tell her, is never going to happen. A thousand lifetimes have given her an excellent eye for the extraordinary, and Utena, more than anyone Anthy has seen since Akio in his glory days (before he was Akio, before he fell from grace), has the air of the extraordinary. She’s the sort whose fate is threaded through the fabric of revolution without even trying.

No wonder the rest of the council hates her so much. Utena stumbles on and refuses everything they fight for.

“Please stop saying we’re engaged,” Utena says, in the middle of the night, a few short weeks after her first duel.

Anthy plays with the ends of her hair, idly thinking about dying it a hideous color, cutting it short, shaving it off. She won’t, of course, but sometimes it’s nice to fantasize about such things.

“Are you listening?” Utena asks.

She’s too kind to shout, but not so weak that she’ll keep quiet when she wants Anthy’s full attention and isn’t getting it. If Anthy is honest with herself, she can admit that this is half the reason she so often refuses to answer Utena right away.

“Hmm?” Anthy asks. “Sorry, Miss Utena. I was dozing off. What did I miss?”

Utena groans, flops over onto her stomach, and covers her head with a pillow. “Nothing,” she says, the sound muffled by her melodrama.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Utena is just a girl, the same age as Anthy, but infinitely younger.

She’s careful to keep her voice as neutrally apologetic as possible when she says, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t listening. I’m not being a very good bride tonight.”

Utena sits up and puts her head in her hands. Her hair falls around her shoulders, long and luxuriously feminine even when sleep-tousled. It’s the only thing about her that’s deliberately girlish, and Anthy wonders if Utena might keep styling her hair this way so that her prince will recognize her.

Utena climbs out of her bed, strides over to Anthy’s, and stands there with her hands on her hips. Slim hips, almost narrow enough to be a boy’s, but so pretty, just like the rest of her. When she gives in, Utena will be the most beautiful of Anthy’s conquests; the most beautiful of her possessors.

“You’re not my _bride_ ,” Utena says. “I don’t care what kind of games the stupid student council plays. It isn’t right to treat you like property. It doesn’t matter if I win a hundred duels; the only way you should belong to me, or anyone else, is if you want to.”

She’s such a foolish girl. Her idealism might be admirable if it wasn’t so terribly trite and fruitless.

“But if I want to belong to you, would you accept me then, Miss Utena?” Anthy asks.

Utena gapes, blushes, then says, “No! I mean, I do _accept_ you, as a friend. But if you mean something else―or more, or―that’s not what I’m trying to get from you, okay?”

_Yet_ , Anthy thinks. _That isn’t what you want yet._

“As you say, Miss Utena.”

.

.

Anthy keeps as much distance as she can, and she takes care to avert her eyes when Utena would prefer not to be scrutinized, but she’s watching all the same.

For such a popular, gregarious girl, Utena is awfully isolated and friendless. Her only consistent companion is Wakaba, and the difference in their regard for each other is so profound it’s laughable. Wakaba looks at Utena like she’s the sun in her sky; Utena looks at Wakaba like a hapless damsel in need of constant rescue.

She has no real family. An only child with dead parents and a neglectful aunt who shipped her off to Ohtori without a second thought―although, to be fair, Akio summoned Utena here, and poor Auntie Whatshername could never have resisted that magic.

This is the key: orphans want to be nurtured, the friendless crave an audience of peers, and all lonely creatures desire intimacy. Utena may be the loneliest creature at Ohtori, after Anthy herself. And the thing about loneliness is, no matter how you try to outrun it, it always catches up to you.

.

.

Utena’s greatest weakness is her obsession with an illusory, fairytale prince. That’s an affliction of the heart that Anthy can understand, because the thing she yearns for most―above power, above peace, above freedom―is to regain the pure love of her prince. The ache of his absence feels like swords in her side, through her chest, between her legs, down her throat. She’s silenced and crippled by her need for him.

In the twilight gloom of the garden, Utena could almost be Dios. They look nothing alike, but bodies are only shells for the spirits within, and Anthy catches glimpses of the prince Utena could someday be.

“Roses are so thorny,” Utena says. “Don’t you ever hurt your fingers?”

Anthy plucks a stray weed from the earth. It’s trying to strangle her flowers from the roots, and that simply won’t do.

“Of course not. My roses are unfailingly agreeable. Why would they hurt me?” Anthy asks.

“Uh, right.”

Utena has a very particular tone of voice that comes out when she thinks Anthy is acting strangely but doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Making Utena squirm like this is a petty entertainment, but the last millennium has been very short on amusements, so Anthy forgives herself for it.

She tends to her garden and watches Utena struggle with math homework. She sits in the dirt with a battered textbook balanced on her knees, worrying a pencil eraser between her teeth.

“How’s algebra?” Anthy asks.

Utena closes the book and jumps to her feet, smiling. “Boring and impossible. Wanna get out of here?”

Anthy sits up, shakes the black soil from her fingers, and says, “Oh yes, but I’m afraid I can’t. New rosebuds require extra care. If I don’t take my time with them, they won’t enjoy blooming as much as they should.”

Utena stands up a little straighter, the way she does when she’s nervous. Good, because that flirtation was about as subtle as a hammer, and Anthy might rip her hair out if one more innuendo goes straight over Utena’s pretty pink head. Virgins are so endlessly tiresome.

“Okay!” Utena says, all false, bright cheer. “I’ll catch you later then.”

“See you at bedtime,” Anthy says.

Utena runs from the greenhouse, cheeks flaming red, and Anthy thinks, _Finally_. It will happen soon, and she’s thankful for an end to the dread, the anticipation.

But another week passes, then two, then more. Utena fights her way through the student council, cutting down opponents with skill and luck and the grace of Dios. All this time, and Utena never makes a single demand of Anthy, except for her to be herself.

Like she has a self to be anymore. Like it wasn’t stripped away long ago.

Utena wins and wins, until she doesn’t. Touga, that wretch, is as underhanded as he is clever. He knew he could never beat Utena outright, so he employed the lowest of methods to defeat her.

Utena loses, and Anthy ends up under the president’s thumb again. Touga doesn’t even want her, but he uses her anyway, simply to spite Utena.

Afterward, he plays with her hair and says, “Tell me about her.”

“She’s just a girl,” Anthy says. “Nothing compared to you.”

Touga laughs. “You really are a false little thing. Could you even be true if you tried?”

Something withers within Anthy when she smiles. “I could be whatever you want, Master Touga.”

.

.

Utena seems crushed by the weight of her failure, brought low by a boy, and Anthy thinks, _You weren’t so special after all_. Why would Akio put so much stock in this girl’s resilience when one loss could disarm her so completely?

But then she faces Touga again, and that’s when Anthy sees what Akio has seen: Utena’s will may be fractured, but only a miracle could break it.

When Touga falls and Utena rises, the rose on her breast intact, Anthy has to blink away tears. She’s being rescued. Someone came back for her, and in the quietest corner of Anthy’s heart, she feels _hope_ for the first time in forever.

She returns to Utena’s room and promises herself that tonight will be the night.

It’s bright for the late hour, the dorm illuminated by silver moonlight, and Anthy can make out the shape of Utena across the room, tossing and turning in bed.

“Can’t sleep?” Anthy asks.

Utena sighs, then says, “I’m so sorry that I lost. That you had to go back to him because of me.”

Anthy gets up, walks across the room, and sits on Utena’s bed. She knows how she looks: dark curls loose and wild, the hemline of her nightgown riding high on her thighs. Higher still, as she moves so that she’s straddling Utena’s lap.

There’s a blanket and pajamas separating them, but Utena still startles and sits up, saying, “Anthy!”

“Yes?”

Utena grips the sheets, and she looks fit to burst from embarrassment. It’s endearing in the most annoying way.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

Anthy ignores that question, because Utena knows very well what’s happening here.

Her knees are shaking, knuckles white, hips shifting―so minutely that Utena probably doesn’t even notice, but Anthy does. Anthy notices everything about her.

“I’m glad to be with you again,” she whispers, and it’s true. It’s the most honest thing she’s ever said to a duelist, and _no, no, no,_ that’s not acceptable. Akio will rip that kind of dangerous thinking right out of her if he discovers it.

“I’m glad too,” Utena says. Her fingers twitch like she’s trying not to touch, not to take.

_Go ahead._ Anthy almost wants to pray, to beseech any god listening for Utena to claim what’s hers.

Instead, Utena sits up, wraps her arms around Anthy’s waist, and says, “You don’t have to do this. Not with me.”

It’s a sweet thought, but if she keeps failing to make headway in Utena’s seduction it will infuriate Akio. When Akio is angry, he makes Anthy suffer in every way he can think of, and he’s such a creative man, her brother.

“I know,” Anthy lies. “You’re not like the others. You’re different.”

Everyone likes to hear _that_ , no matter how noble they are.

Utena is so tall for a girl that, even sitting in her lap, Anthy will have to lean up a bit for their lips to touch.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

Utena’s hands slide down to her waist and her hold tightens, but not enough to hurt. She’s gentle, so gentle, and Anthy draws closer, tilts her chin up. She waits, but the kiss never comes.

Anthy leans into Utena’s embrace, allows herself be held up instead of held down for once. “Is something wrong?”

“No, but I thought _you_ were going to kiss _me_ ,” Utena says. She’s smiling, playful, and so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her.

Anthy closes the breath of space between them and takes the kiss that Utena should have taken from her. It’s chaste, the barest press of lips, innocent need without lust. Utena gives herself over to it, the tension in her body melting away, mouth soft and pliant under Anthy’s. She means to tease, to wrap her legs around Utena’s waist and offer up her body slowly, piece by piece, but Anthy finds that she can’t. Not with Utena cradling her like she’s made of glass, tasting her so sweetly, without expectation. As if this kiss is an end unto itself.

.

.

_how the moonlight bathes us in the brightest kind of light. how nerves electrify. how hearts terrify. how she shows her teeth and the spine quivers._

_how she is the most tender lover I have ever known._

_gently, we howl at the stars together._

_gently, we swallow each other whole._

\- Emily Palermo -

“Love in the Time of Monsters”

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End file.
